ABSTRACT
The title of this theme is, I think, politics and planning for the cities of tomorrow, which means the subtitle should be Mission Impossible, because I have got ten minutes to cover what it has taken an urban task force well over a year to do. I am going to talk about the affinities and the tensions between sustainability and the city in political and quality contexts, as linked to the Government’s agenda as it is currently emerging around the dreadful vaporous phrases ‘joined-up thinking’ and ‘joined-up policy’. Then I’ll look at some of the directions in which we think policy might go in the next ten to twenty years to shape what we at Demos call the ‘ecopolis’. This is the buzz-word we’re using as a way of summing up a sustainable system of urban economy and urban government.
